Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution: 25th Anniversary Edition

Steven Levy's classic book traces the exploits of the computer revolution's original hackers - those brilliant and eccentric nerds from the late 1950s through the early '80s who took risks, bent the rules, and pushed the world in a radical new direction. With updated material from noteworthy hackers such as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Richard Stallman, and Steve Wozniak, Hackers is a fascinating story that begins in early computer research labs and leads to the first home computers.

Future Crimes: A Journey to the Dark Side of Technology - and How to Survive It

The New York Times best seller. Technological advances have benefited our world in immeasurable ways, but there is an ominous flipside. Criminals are often the earliest and most innovative adopters of technology, and modern times have led to modern crimes. Today's criminals are stealing identities, draining online bank accounts, and wiping out computer servers.

Tor and the Dark Art of Anonymity: How to Be Invisible from NSA Spying

This manual will give you the incognito tools that'll make you a master of anonymity! Other books tell you to install Tor and then encrypt your hard drive...and leave it at that. I go much deeper, delving into the very engine of ultimate network security, taking it to an art form where you'll grow a new darknet persona - how to be anonymous online without looking like you're trying to be anonymous online.

Electronic Dreams: How 1980s Britain Learned to Love the Computer

In Electronic Dreams, Tom Lean tells the story of how computers invaded British homes for the first time, as people set aside their worries of electronic brains and Big Brother and embraced the wonder technology of the 1980s. This book charts the history of the rise and fall of the home computer, the family of futuristic and quirky machines that took computing from the realm of science and science fiction to being a user-friendly domestic technology.

Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World's Most Wanted Hacker

Kevin Mitnick was the most elusive computer break-in artist in history. He accessed computers and networks at the world's biggest companies-and however fast the authorities were, Mitnick was faster, sprinting through phone switches, computer systems, and cellular networks. He spent years skipping through cyberspace, always three steps ahead and labeled unstoppable.

Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Capture Your Data and Control Your World

In Data and Goliath, Schneier reveals the full extent of surveillance, censorship, and propaganda in society today, examining the risks of cybercrime, cyberterrorism, and cyberwar. He shares technological, legal, and social solutions that can help shape a more equal, private, and secure world. This is an audiobook to which everyone with an Internet connection - or bank account or smart device or car, for that matter - needs to listen.

Social Engineering: The Art of Human Hacking

From elicitation, pretexting, influence and manipulation all aspects of social engineering are picked apart, discussed and explained by using real world examples, personal experience and the Science & Technology behind them to unraveled the mystery in social engineering. Kevin Mitnick - one of the most famous social engineers in the world - popularized the term social engineering. He explained that it is much easier to trick someone into revealing a password than to exert the effort of hacking.

Thinking about Cybersecurity: From Cyber Crime to Cyber Warfare

Cyberspace is the 21st century's greatest engine of change. Telecommunications, commercial and financial systems, government operations, food production - virtually every aspect of global civilization now depends on interconnected cyber systems to operate; systems that have helped advance medicine, streamline everyday commerce, and so much more.

Chaos Monkeys: Inside the Silicon Valley Money Machine

Computer engineers use 'chaos monkey' software to wreak havoc and test system robustness. Similarly, tech entrepreneurs like Antonio García Martínez are society's chaos monkeys - their innovations disrupt every aspect of our lives, from transportation (Uber) and holidays (Airbnb) to television (Netflix) and dating (Tinder) - all in search of the perfect business miracle. Describing himself as 'high strung, fast talking, and wired on a combination of caffeine, fear, and greed at all times', García Martínez left Wall Street to make his fortune in Silicon Valley.

Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World's First Digital Weapon

Top cybersecurity journalist Kim Zetter tells the story behind the virus that sabotaged Iran's nuclear efforts and shows how its existence has ushered in a new age of warfare - one in which a digital attack can have the same destructive capability as a megaton bomb.

Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions

All our lives are constrained by limited space and time, limits that give rise to a particular set of problems. What should we do, or leave undone, in a day or a lifetime? How much messiness should we accept? What balance of new activities and familiar favorites is the most fulfilling? These may seem like uniquely human quandaries, but they are not: computers, too, face the same constraints, so computer scientists have been grappling with their version of such problems for decades.

The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America

In The Shadow Factory, James Bamford, the foremost expert on National Security Agency, charts its transformation since 9/11, as the legendary code breakers turned their ears away from outside enemies, such as the Soviet Union, and inward to enemies whose communications increasingly crisscross America.

The Dark Net

The Dark Net is not a separate realm but one that stretches from popular social media sites to the most secretive corners of the deep web. It is a world that is rarely out of the news but one that is little understood - and almost never explored. In The Dark Net, Jamie Bartlett presents a revelatory portrait of the internet's strangest subcultures: of trolls, drug dealers, hackers and political extremists.

Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know

In Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know®, New York Times best-selling author P. W. Singer and noted cyberexpert Allan Friedman team up to provide the kind of deeply informative resource book that has been missing on a crucial issue of 21st-century life. Written in a lively, accessible style, filled with engaging stories and illustrative anecdotes, the book is structured around the key question areas of cyberspace and its security: how it all works, why it all matters....

Your Deceptive Mind: A Scientific Guide to Critical Thinking Skills

No skill is more important in today's world than being able to think about, understand, and act on information in an effective and responsible way. What's more, at no point in human history have we had access to so much information, with such relative ease, as we do in the 21st century. But because misinformation out there has increased as well, critical thinking is more important than ever. These 24 rewarding lectures equip you with the knowledge and techniques you need to become a savvier, sharper critical thinker in your professional and personal life.

The Black Door: Spies, Secret Intelligence and British Prime Ministers

The Black Door explores the evolving relationship between successive British Prime Ministers and the intelligence agencies, from Asquith's Secret Service Bureau to Cameron's National Security Council. At the beginning of the 20th Century the British intelligence system was underfunded and lacked influence in government. But as the new millennium dawned, intelligence had become so integral to policy that it was used to make the case for war.

The World's Most Dangerous Geek: And More True Hacking Stories

Every day, it seems, we hear stories about hackers. Hackers breaking into the computers of banks, governments, and corporations. Some are criminals, coding to exploit and destroy. Others are activists, using their tools to challenge institutions and fight for freedom. But often these characters linger in the shadows. Who are they? What makes them tick? Are they our allies, or our enemies?

When Computing Got Personal: A History of the Desktop Computer

This is the story of how a handful of geeks and mavericks dragged the computer out of corporate back rooms and laboratories and into our living rooms and offices. It is a tale not only of extraordinary innovation and vision but also of cunning business deals, boardroom tantrums and acrimonious lawsuits.

The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution

Following his blockbuster biography of Steve Jobs, The Innovators is Walter Isaacson's revealing story of the people who created the computer and the Internet. It is destined to be the standard history of the digital revolution and an indispensable guide to how innovation really happens. What were the talents that allowed certain inventors and entrepreneurs to turn their visionary ideas into disruptive realities? What led to their creative leaps? Why did some succeed and others fail?

Soft Skills: The Software Developer's Life Manual

Soft Skills: The Software Developer's Life Manual is a guide to a well-rounded, satisfying life as a technology professional. In it, developer and life coach John Sonmez offers advice to developers on important subjects like career and productivity, personal finance and investing, and even fitness and relationships. Arranged as a collection of 71 short chapters, this fun listen invites you to dip in wherever you like.

Python Programming for Beginners: An Introduction to the Python Computer Language and Computer Programming

If you want to learn how to program in Python, but don't know where to start read on. Knowing where to start when learning a new skill can be a challenge, especially when the topic seems so vast. There can be so much information available that you can't even decide where to start. Or worse, you start down the path of learning and quickly discover too many concepts, commands, and nuances that aren't explained.

In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives

Few companies in history have ever been as successful and as admired as Google, the company that has transformed the Internet and become an indispensable part of our lives. How has Google done it? Veteran technology reporter Steven Levy was granted unprecedented access to the company, and in this revelatory book he takes listeners inside Google headquarters - the Googleplex - to explain how Google works.

Spam Nation: The Inside Story of Organized Cybercrime - from Global Epidemic to Your Front Door

In Spam Nation, investigative journalist and cybersecurity expert Brian Krebs unmasks the criminal masterminds driving some of the biggest spam and hacker operations targeting Americans and their bank accounts. Tracing the rise, fall, and alarming resurrection of the digital mafia behind the two largest spam pharmacies - and countless viruses, phishing, and spyware attacks - he delivers the first definitive narrative of the global spam problem and its threat to consumers everywhere.

And on That Bombshell: Inside the Madness and Genius of TOP GEAR

For 13 years, 22 series and 175 shows, Richard Porter was script editor of Top Gear, from the first faltering pilot episode in 2002 until the very last show presented by Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May in 2015. Along the way they destroyed cars, sparked diplomatic incidents, set fire to caravans, almost killed one of the presenters, and somehow transformed Top Gear from a shabby BBC Two motoring show into an Emmy-winning, record-breaking, planet-straddling behemoth.

Publisher's Summary

Using the exploits of three international hackers, Cyberpunk provides a fascinating tour of a bizarre subculture populated by outlaws who penetrate even the most sensitive computer networks and wreak havoc on the information they find - everything from bank accounts to military secrets. In a book filled with as much adventure as any Ludlum novel, the author shows what motivates these young hackers to access systems, how they learn to break in, and how little can be done to stop them.

I was a bit disappointed in my expectations of this audiobook. Having finished Ghost In The Wire, which was gripping and read like a Jason Bourne novel, I was hungry for more. What I got here though was a much more pedestrian retelling of three famous cases, much of which was focussed on the trials and legal aspects of the cases rather than the technical or cultural.

The audiobook reading has mistakes in, which I find unforgivable in a professional production. Not only does the reader mispronounce many words, but a couple of times he says the wrong word or stumbles over a word, and they don't even rerecord it!

For what it is, however, it's a competent and interesting book, if a little dull in places.

this book is for the old school hackers. but old the old school hacker already know this old stories.

Any additional comments?

i'm tired of reading about hackers from the 80's is so lame already . lol how many times they going to tell kevin Mitnick same old stories "come on". if you want to listen to a great hacker book that is modern is "We are Anonymous" by Parmy Olson now thats a great book.

9 of 17 people found this review helpful

Larry V.

new york

28/08/16

Overall

Performance

Story

"fascinating look at the first hackers"

very interesting to learn about the first hackers and phone phreakers in the 1980s in the United States and Germany.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

Amazon Customer

21/07/16

Overall

Performance

Story

"Journalistic Storytelling At Its Best"

I have a much better understanding of Kevin Mitnick and early phreeking culture. The writings weave a wonderful story while retaining a factual journalistic feel.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

Brad Mills

07/07/16

Overall

Performance

Story

"Worth a credit, but it's 3 hours too long =\"

I thought this book was a modern take on computer hacking… I was expecting to hear stories like the Myspace “sammy is my hero” bug, or Wikileaks, the story of Kim Dot Com, or more modern counter culture computer hacking rebels.

I figured the neon art deco cover and tacky music in the audiobook were just stylistic choices.

However, I quickly found out that this was a story of hackers from the 1980s. It’s actually a pretty interesting snapshot of a bygone era of hacking, computers and society in general. It’s worth a listen in 2016+ if only to see how the system worked back in the 80s and 90s.

I would not recommend this for a general audience, you have to be interested in early technology. The book drags on in places, and it’s very journalistic in that it covers an absurd amount of information. I feel like it could have been shaved down by half (200 pages) and I would have gotten the same information out of it.

I would never have gotten through this if I was reading it … listening, I was able to put the speed on 1.25X and hack away at it on drives and walks for about a month.

The first part is focused on a group of US phone hackers called “phreaks” who seemed to have more power than hackers today have. They could use the phone system to not just make free long distance calls or free calls from phone boots, but change credit reports, wire money, make fake identities, issue police warrants, etc. This first section had lots of intrigue and betrayal. This section focused on “Kevin Mitnick”

The second section was all about some young European computer hackers who started stealing software from university and government computers and selling it to the KGB. It went into detail about the friendship and betrayal between the 3-4 main kids in that hacker group, following one of them specifically “Pengo” through to his trial.

The third part was all about the brilliant son of a prestigious NSA computer engineer who wrote the first virus in the late 1980s that crippled the internet. An entertaining tale of his upbringing, his time in university and the events that unfolded as he inadvertently took down the internet, including his trial.

At the end there’s an updated epilogue that takes place 5 years after the book was written (1995) and updates us on the 3 subjects of the book. I’d love to hear where they all are now, 20 years later.

Overall it’s an interesting cultural and historical look at the snapshot of where we were in the 1980s and 1990s, for that I’d say it’s worth a listen … but it’s definitely too long for my liking.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

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